Mississippi College Graduate Clint Myers Earns Master’s Degree in China

Clint Myers

Clint Myers climbed countless mountains, visited the Great Wall, and spoke Mandarin while earning a master’s degree in China.

A May 2012 Mississippi College graduate from Laurel, Myers recently returned to the United States, and spoke highly of his experience at MC’s sister university in the Chinese Study Abroad Program.

“It helped me to learn first-hand about the world and how to view others,” Myers said.

Myers received a prestigious Chinese government scholarship that allowed him to obtain a master’s degree in biology at Huazhong Normal University. He was awarded the scholarship two years ago after completing two years of Chinese language study at MC where he was a biology major.

Competition for the scholarship was pretty keen. Clint was among 1,200 students from 170 nations receiving the academic award.

Myers loved living in what he calls the Tower of Babel dormitory that mixed students from Africa, Asia, North America and other locales under one roof.

“Everyone living on a floor would be from a different country,” Myers said.

The 24-year-old Mississippi native attended the Thanksgiving Church that used English for the American students, while their friends from China joined in.

“It was a great learning experience,” Myers said. He also found time to see the site of the 2008 Olympics.

Returning to the Magnolia State, Myers made it a point to visit with people at the Christian university’s Office of Global Education.

“Clint Myers fell in love with the Chinese language and culture,” says Ran An, his Chinese instructor and a staff member at the office on the Clinton campus. Myers set a goal to learn as much about the Chinese language as he could, and accomplished it, he said.

Congratulating his former student on his successful completion of a master’s degree in China, Ran An says his mission isn’t finished. “I hope he can do more to deepen the mutual understanding between people in China and America.”

The hefty scholarship covered costs for tuition, books, room and board and a monthly allowance. The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China created the program for extraordinary international students. Scholarship winners in the USA came from such elite schools as Harvard, Yale, the University of California and Georgetown.

A 2006 graduate of Northeast Jones High School in Laurel, Myers is now considering a career in the medical field in the United States.